TutAARial, or How I learned to Stop Fearing Hearts of Iron 3 (Semper Fi)

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To bad photobucket has that limit, since I think your AAR is quite interesting. I use webshots myself, and I believe they have a maximum of 3200 photo's per free account. Don't know the bandwithlimits of photobucket, but the 3200 free images at webshots seem a lot to me. Maybe you can check the site? www.webshots.com

Tim: I think Photobucket's a bit better for free.... I made the mistake early on of not saving my screenshots as JPEGs, and they were much bigger and probably ate up a lot of bandwidth from that. I also didn't know about their bandwidth restrictions and didn't monitor it.

Ess: Definitely. Unless you don't want the game to take over your life completely. It's amazingly addicting. I never played without SF, but I hear that a lot of the issues that most of the posters to the forum had with the game were fixed with SF. And yes, there are still a few issues, but for me, none that turn me off from the game!

My next post is going to be more about ground warfare tactics in general, and I'll probably going to pull some screen shots from some other of my games that will help illustrate some of the tactics to use when you're fighting it out!

Interesting AAR. You seem to have a good idea of what you want to do and how you go about achieving it. As far as your tentative invasion into Germany goes, I can't help but think that the forces assigned to the task won't be equal to it. Still, it'll be interesting to see how far you can get.

Ground War Part 2: Tactical Principles II

General thoughts on Combat in HOI3 SF:

There are some basic principles that we should go over.

1. Encirclement. This is any field general’s goal. Encircle the enemy so retreat is impossible. The key to this tactic is to achieve penetration with enough forces to keep the encirclement intact (i.e., leaving forces in place to block every avenue of escape), but also to fight off enemy attempts to break through the encirclement to rescue the trapped divisions.

There are several issues at hand. The wider the circle, the more vulnerable the friendly troops are to supply lines being cut. Additionally, the wider the encirclement, the more troops you need.

If you think of the thrust as a comet, your “head” will lose its punch as it leaves its “trail” of at least 1 division in each province behind it. This is why the “double pincer” is a very popular variation. It allows 2 prongs to meet in the middle and attack that final province from 2 angles. In our situation we will be attempting this maneuver.
When encircling, you should be especially mindful of certain terrain characteristics that can help you. The first is inaccessible provinces. Any province with infrastructure of 10% can’t be entered. If you leave one of these provinces as the only method of escape, the enemy’s divisions are effectively encircled and when you defeat them they surrender (they’re taken out of the game). The second is coastline. If you encircle and pin the enemy against a coastline and defeat them, it is the same as encircling them. Finally, If you have a border with a neutral country that the enemy can’t enter, they’ll be encircled. However, diplomatically, the enemy may be able to negotiate transit rights with that country and save their units that way.

Encircling is the ONLY way of taking land units out of the game permanently.

2. Pinning/Holding Engagments.

When you attack enemy units, they can’t move until the battle is either won or lost. This way if you need to make sure an enemy stays in one place and not reinforce another area, the best way to do this is to attack them to lock them in place. You don’t have to win this battle. Just have it last long enough to accomplish your goals elsewhere.

3. Double Pincer Movements.

The best double pincer envelopment I’ve achieved in HOI3 was in a game as Germany. A key condition that led to it was the fact that I had invaded and annexed both Yugoslavia and Romania (in order to open up a southern front against USSR, and take oil fields that Romania has), and Hungary was still neutral. This created a nice little gap in my front with the USSR around Hungary.

In my Operation Barbarossa (invasion of USSR), I decided to use this gap in the front as a way to envelop large numbers of enemy troops. I came up from Romania with an armoured corps, and using my infantry to pin the border divisions in place, and did the same from southern Poland (although with 2 armoured corps), pinning with infantry and enveloping with armour. By this time, my Operational Level Organization tech was already up to at least 1944 levels, which minimized the amount of waiting time between attacks – this is especially valuable for the armour which needs to close the gaps as quickly as possible.

Note the armour on the outside of the pincer and the infantry on the inside.

Launching on May 1, 1941, with these two prongs closing in, I managed to close the gaps (it took about 3 weeks).

On June 6, the entire pocket was sealed off, eliminating over 200,000 Soviet troops, just over a month after my initial attack.

In fact, my initial attack consisted of 3 simultaneous encirclements. The first was in the north, where I used an armoured corps to cut north east, and I used an amphibious and paratrooper invasion of Riga, with follow-up infantry cutting south to meet the armour. This encircled probably about 100,000 (I didn’t get an accurate count, as the final pocket closure was a little messy!) troops.

Another, smaller one was also achieved in the south as I used another armoured corps to cut south east to Odessa, eventually trapping 4 or 5 divisions.

The one thing to remember is to make sure that your infantry doesn't get left too far behind. Use pinning attacks with the infantry to keep the enemy units in place, so they can't retreat and get outside the pocket before it closes. You don't want to use overwhelming force for these pinning attacks, you need to keep the enemy in place long enough to get your armour (or encircling forces) behind them. Also make sure to leave at least one division in place when moving forward (this is why you see that whole corps of infantry on the northern prong of the pincer). It keeps the circle unbroken.

4. Breaking down Forts.

One of the most common methods of taking provinces that are full of enemies, or have very strong fortifications is to follow the strategies mentioned previously, but do one more thing. These battles can take a long time (weeks even), and it’s good to have several extra units on hand in each province you’re attacking from. When the attacking troops have their organization get low, start attacking with the units that aren’t involved in combat and call off the tired units to let them regain their organization, while maintaining the pressure. If you can surround and cut off the offending province, things will go faster, as they’ll be out of supply fairly quickly.

5. Amphibious Assaults.

Amphibious assaults are tricky, and I’ll deal with them a little bit more later on, but the key to assaulting shorelines is simple. You must get a hold of a port as soon as possible. Without a port, the only way to keep your troops in supply is with airdrops (select a transport and use the “Air Supply” mission. No, it’s not an 80’s “hair band”).

First, USE MARINES. Any unit gets a big penalty when attacking from a ship. Marines (usually 3 Marine and 1 ENG brigade) get a far lower penalty.

The second thing to know is that you begin your assault one of two ways. The first way is to click the transport fleet (I usually have cruisers attached to this fleet in order to provide defense, but more on that below), and right click on the province and select the “invasion” mission.

The second is to manually select (either from the fleet, or by clicking on the fleet repeatedly to select), and right click the province you’re attacking. If you have a large enough invasion force, you can also manually select the neighbouring provinces on either side to try to land troops unopposed, and from there to attack your chosen province. Frequently, the AI will do this automatically.

This is a really useful strategy because once ashore, those troops don’t have the amphibious assault penalty. The main thing to remember is that the troops ashore only have enough supplies to last about a month at the maximum and you’ll need to capture a port in order to resupply them, and any other troops.

The next thing is that you need to defend your transport fleet while they’re assaulting the shore. This is the first reason that you’re going to need a decent navy (or at least a better one than whoever you’re attacking)! You should put your fleet, or fleets in the province that your transports are unloading the troops from under the “move” order. That will keep them there and engage any opposition that tries to dislodge your foothold. If your transports are destroyed while your troops are in the middle of an amphibious assault, then you're going to lose those troops completely as well.

Finally, in this game, supply becomes a real challenge to overcome. When you’re assaulting a new front across a body of water, you’re going to need to supply your troops. In this respect, you’re not going to want to use a lot of supply heavy units (tanks, motorized, mechanized, etc.) until you know your supply lines can support them.

Let’s use my invasion of Spain as an example. Spain is always a supply nightmare. Low infrastructure and small ports (the lower level of naval port means you can get less supplies in each day), means that an invasion of Spain can grind to a standstill very quickly. So how did I conquer Spain? I landed 1 corps of 4 infantry divisions (3 INF brigades, no support) at EVERY port. This kept the drain on my supplies to a minimum, while opening up a large number of ports to keep the units supplied. I then spread out the units to link up the fronts, and pushed towards the centre. I actually deliberately built about 18 infantry divisions over the course of the 6-8 months beforehand in order to make sure I had enough troops of the proper configuration to successfully assault Iberia.

Notice you can see Green (I was playing as Italy) at EVERY port. By the time all the fronts linked up, the Spanish forces were completely surrounded.

6. Paradrops

Paratroopers are costly units. First of all, they take longer to train and cost more IC than regular infantry units. Secondly, in order to drop paratroopers, you need transport planes. These planes have other uses (see Air Supply), but they are very costly in terms of IC. This is why I haven’t built any as France, but I usually have at least one corps of 3-5 airborne divisions when I play most other major countries.

The other thing to keep in mind with paratroopers is that only the paratrooper brigade can be loaded onto transport planes (in the vanilla game. If you use the ICE mod, you can add other “airdrop-able” support brigades). Each troop transport can carry 1 three-brigade paratroop division – 15 weight, while the 3 brigade division is also 15 weight. I'm pretty sure I've researched the Airborne Assault Equipment tech, which is why my Paratroopers division is only 12 weight. If you build 4 brigade divisions, they won’t fit into the transport, although I believe the transports can be upgraded with the right tech.

Deployment: When to use Paratroopers? First of all, you want to make sure that they’re not going to be isolated for long. While paratroopers fight better than other units when out of supply, they’re not superhuman, and actually lack a punch because of the lack of support brigades. I tend to use them to help out taking major objectives, like enemy capitals or VP provinces that are heavily defended. The basically add an extra front. However, if you send them too far ahead of your lines, they can become surrounded and destroyed. This essentially the problem with the Allies operation “Market-Garden” in Holland in the fall of 1944. They depended on the paratroopers landing ahead, capturing key bridges in succession before the Germans could destroy them, but the ground troops couldn’t keep up with the schedule due to heavier than expected German resistance. This hung out the paratroopers to dry.

I usually wait until my ground forces have reached a city, begun the attack, then launch the paratroopers to assist. This will help take the city faster, and make sure that the paratroops don’t get trapped too far behind enemy lines, and overwhelmed.

Also make sure to cover the airdrop with fighters.

To illustrate the last 2 points, I’ve initiated a combined marine and paratrooper assault of Riga. With just the Marines attacking from offshore, (defended by 2 carrier battle groups), there’s an 80% chance of victory, and a frontage of 10.

By the time 3 other units (one is a combat capable HQ with an infantry and 2 support brigades attached) begin their assaults from the neighbouring provinces, those chances go up to 84%.

Once I get the paratroopers involved, the combat front goes up to 25, and the victory percentage is up to 93%.

Also of note here is the combat screen which has a few other pieces of information than what I showed earlier.

1. Shows that dissent is a factor – this is another reason to keep your dissent to a minimum (in addition to it taking away from available IC).
2. Shows that the defending unit(s) are being enveloped and is being penalized for that. If it’s a complete encirclement, there’s another symbol and an even bigger penalty.
3. Tell us that the amphibious penalty is being invoked (only 5% for marines, but much higher for other units).
4. Tells us that there have been units paradropped.
5. Tells us that the defenders are being bombarded by ships off the coast.

The tooltip gives us a breakdown of how the modifiers are being calculated. This is the one for the attackers, and I’ll show another one for the defenders. If you mouse over the gold and green bars individually, it will show you the percentage of troops that are still alive, and the organization level of the unit. You can see that the green bar of the Russian division has already dropped a little bit.

Nerfgen: 1) - Total Mobilisation in terms of the economic policy? If that's what you mean, as soon as the war starts, then yes.
2) Definitely Balkans first. If you ready my other AAR on Italy, you'll see why. Spain is tough to conquer because of supply issues, even as Germany (I took care of Spain in one game after the Vichy event because they had joined the Allies already). The other thing to keep in mind that Spain should be conquered before you're at war with the UK, but not too soon! I believe I waited until spring/summer of 1939, and didn't join the war against the Allies until mid-1940. By that time, I had a couple of carriers in my fleet and had really concentrated on my Navy.

As Italy, it's a nightmare, especially if the British are lurking around in the Mediterranean. One of the main reasons Italy lost in North Africa in real life was because the Royal Navy owned the seas and made supplying their troops very difficult. When you invade spain as Italy, you've got to make sure of 2 things. #1 - you can have enough Naval superiority to control at least parts of the Med in order to land your troops, and #2 to know that when you're at war with UK, you'll be able to compete and neutralize their navy so you can keep your units there supplied.

Indeed. I always take the balkans (and Romania) as soon as possible as Italy and then turn to Spain (only if it's republican . If not I won't go there).
Romania I take early mainly for it's economic boost (oil for money). And as early as possible to upgrade the infrastructure.

In my current game i'm trying to make a light infantry+bersaglieri army supported by 2 armored divisions for Lybia. (Using common weapons of WW2 mod)
see if it will be enough to beat the UK. Ethiopia is puppeted and only keeps a skeleton militia force from Italy.

I intended of course economic mobilisation for Germany (also I suppose Heavy industry emphasis?)
I tend to use the middle option in both throughout my games as Germany (I find that until the turn of the tide the german people were not so much aware that it was total war and I try to render it by keeping my economy balanced). I know. i'm a sentimental basterd ;D

The USSR produced 57,224 T-34 tanks of various specifications during the WW2 timeline. 44,900 became scrap metal (aka destroyed).
Total USSR AFV 1941-45 losses were 96.600. War winning tank much?

Ground War Part 3: The Attack Begins!

Now back to our little game. If you recall, where we left off, it was September 4 and the Germans were attacking in Poland, and had left some of the Siegfried Line lightly defended. We are now waiting for the units that had been intended to defend the north border with Belgium to come down to the Maginot Line where they'll be used to break through the German lines.

On the 8th of Sept, NZ joined the Allies.

Sept 10: US trade agreement to sell supplies.

At 3am on September 13, the situation had changed along the Maginot Line. There are now at least 2 divisions defending every province. If, by the time my Strategically Redeployed units are able to attack the situation stays the same, we’ll focus our attack on Baden.

At 11pm on September 16, things don’t look fantastic, Germany has brought in huge numbers of reinforcements to the border. I’m not going attack yet. The Poles are doing quite well in Poland, and there is a chance that the Germans will pull some reinforcements from our border to help in Poland.

I've actually made a fairly big mistake here (sorry that I don't have any screenshots of it). I deployed all my breakthrough units to the provinces right on the border. Because the German AI can see this (without radar, you can see units in border provinces), they've gone ahead and reinforced the Siegfried line. This is going to cost time as I move the 7th Army back off the border, to disguise my movements and hopefully the Germans will feel more secure there and pull their own troops away.

Sept. 19: Just as I thought. The Germans are pulling their troops back north away from our border. Even better is that they’re leaving Baden with only 1 division to defend it.

September 22: 22:00 – Under cover of night, I send my breakthrough units back in to the provinces on the border, this time under their own power (rather than using Strategic Redeployment, which assumes the units are put on trains). As soon as they can attack, we will commence.

Sept 23: Single Aircraft Armament advance.

Sept 24: Infantry Support Weapons Advance. Our 3rd Marine division deployed. They won’t be used in this initial attack.

September 25th: You can see by some of the arrows of the German troops that our movements have been detected across the line, and some are coming back down towards us.

We must attack now, although our troops at the North end of the line will be hard pressed to keep the germans busy long enough to tie them down for us to achieve our breakthrough in the south. It’s a big gamble, but one we’re willing to take. For the glory of France!

Sept 28: As you can see, none of the other battles are in any way close to victory (lots of red bubbles), but we are 78 % of the way to victory in Baden. Once this is achieved, we can send our armoured corps rushing through to fill the gap. Notice that our armour ISN’T engaged in the battle at Baden. That’s to prevent the attack delay from becoming a factor as they move through the German lines and engage behind the lines.

Sept 29: Mass Assault Advance.

I have 4 wings of interceptors fighting for air superiority over Baden, and have been using 5 tactical bombers. Our first set of 3 bombers has pretty much been shredded at the moment, so I’ve pulled them back and sent in another two.

Sept 30: Right on cue, another interceptor wing has been completed! I deploy them to Besancon.

October 1: After almost a week of fighting and 767 casualties, we have won the battle of Baden.

Now to sweep through behind and up to trap the German forces. Up north at Saarlouis, I commit the 31 corps in order to keep those german divisions pinned, and a similar action to Saarbrucken with the 32 corps and the 1A corps.

As soon as 72 Corps can attack again, they’ll help out in Donaueschingen.

7A Corps will flush through Baden down to Blumberg.

Oct. 2: We lose the Battle of Villingen. Fortunately there are few divisions there that can be mustered to attack or support.

Oct. 3: We win Blumberg and now are in good position to encircle the Germans.

October 4: We win the Battle of Wissembourg… this is a battle where some free German divisions attacked our troops on our soil, hence our units not taking any casualties. With positions as strongly fortified as the Maginot Line’s, you’ll take very few casualties in attacks like this.

Oct 5: Our Pinning attacks are being very successful. We’re not close to losing any of the remaining battles. We need to wait another four days or so until our armoured corps can attack again. Operational level Organization will be rushed to the top of the research queue, but unfortunately, it will take until May to finish researching the next level.

Uh oh. The Germans have finished with the Poles. This could get bad. Real Bad.

October 7: We won at Hinzergarten creating a pocket in Todtmoos. When our armour can move to Konstanz, the pocket will be closed.

Oct 9: We’re attacked at Konstanz and Blumberg, with far inferior forces. Our pocket is closed and we have 4 German divisions trapped inside.

Oct. 11: A new Armoured division comes online and is assigned to the 2A Corps at Strasbourg. We put a mountain division and an infantry division in the build queue.

Oct 12: We lost at Saarbrucken. However this is not a huge loss, even though we have lost over 4000 troops. I’ve added Combat Medicine and First Aid techs to the research queue to help with our casualties.

It's A race against time! Either you close and eliminate the pocket in time (and cause the Germans some major pain), or the Germans get back from Poland quickly enough to catch your troops somewhere in Germany, without the benefit of those Maginot Line fortifications... Ooh, the suspense!

It's A race against time! Either you close and eliminate the pocket in time (and cause the Germans some major pain), or the Germans get back from Poland quickly enough to catch your troops somewhere in Germany, without the benefit of those Maginot Line fortifications... Ooh, the suspense!

Ground War Part 4: Opening the Gap

Oct. 13: We fend off the attack at Blumberg, and I attack immediately the vulnerable and tired units at Tuttlingen. A Quick victory here will allow me to surround the massive battle at Donaueschingen. This action immediately causes the German divisions to break off their attack of Konstanz.

I use our 3rd Light Cavalry Division to support attack Todtmoos and help speed those 4 divisions demise. While I do have more divisions to throw at Donaueschingen, I’m choosing not to commit them right now. I want to draw that battle out to enable my armour in the south to encircle them and trap them. There are 6 infantry divisions in there that we can take out of action permanently if we play things right.

October 15: Amphibious Warfare Equipment Advance!

Oct. 16: We have won Tuttlingen, and the Germans took more than 3x our casualties.

We also lost at Saarlouis.

We’re attacked at Cattenom, but the Germans break off their attack quickly, and Australia joins the Allies. We finally take Todtmoos, killing over 5000 Germans, but also, since there was a complete encirclement, the surviving soldiers disappear from the game, historically this would have been a surrender of the soldiers involved.

In that screenshot, you can also see that our interceptors are engaged with the German Luftwaffe… We’ll talk more about air and sea battle a little later.

Oct 17: In the wee hours of the morning (1am) the Germans call off their attack of Konstanz. I begin another attack on Saarlouis with 5 fresher divisions.

These German troops were on their way south. Thus because we caught them moving, not all of them are dug in. We get attacked at Cattenom, but only by 1 division.

I’ll attack them in Saarbrucken with my divisions in Sarreguemines.

Oct. 20: With fresh troops from other battles arriving at Tuttlingen, we launch an attack at Ballingen with 3 divisions. This is to allow our armour to drive through once we’ve won and immediately attack Rottweil again. Unfortunately, we couldn’t hold the units at Donaueschingen long enough to enclose them, but they are beaten ragged, and we should win the day there shortly.

October 22: Apparently we were never notified, but we won at Donaueschingen. We were promptly attacked by 4 German divisions. Here’s hoping we can keep them in place long enough to encircle them.

Oct. 23: Another Armoured division is ready and will be attached to 1A Corps. Late at night we find out that we won the battle at Ballingen.

Oct. 26: Single Englne Airframe! Good news and bad news. We lost at Pirmasens, but won at Achern.

Pirmasens was one of those pinning battles that we began in order to pin down German troops. Now even if they do try to assault our penetrating bulge, they’ll be tired from the fighting they’ve been involved in. Germany has also declared war on Denmark. Good. Hopefully this will serve as a distraction.

Oct. 28: We won at Saarbrucken, and we deployed another Infantry division to the 11 Corps at Metz. We also send two divisions from Saarbrucken to St. Wendel, and 3 armoured divisions from Strasbourg to Achern in order to help encircle German troops.

Oct. 30: We win the battle of St. Wendel, losing only 12 soldiers and inflicting 434 deaths on the Germans, but we lose the Battle of Saarlouis. We’ll have to see if the troops there head south to reinforce their comrades, but hopefully we’ve inflicted enough damage to have them rest for a while. We do have 4 or 5 combat ready divisions in Cattenom.

Let’s take a look at our progress at the end of October.

We’ve destroyed (captured) 4 infantry divisions, broken through the fortified defenses at Baden (our initial concentration point), and later at Saarbrucken and Donaueschingen. We’re trying to achieve a double pincer encirclement along the lines of the red arrows.
However, despite this success, there are a few things that have the potential to be worrying or even disastrous.
1. We’re only encountering a fraction of the German Army. The Germans’ ability to throw 30 or more divisions our way is more than a little frightening. This is why our goal is to move 3 or 4 provinces into Germany, go north and encircle troops, especially those at Saarlouis. We failed to do so at Donaueschingen, mainly because the battles elsewhere raged on too long, and also because of operational delay, we couldn’t attack fast enough. Note: Blitzkrieg (lightning war) requires the Operational Level Organization tech to be researched as much as possible!
2. We’ve committed virtually all our forces. The only reserves we have are guarding the border with Italy, and those guys aren’t going anywhere.
3. We won’t be able to encircle the Germans and in effect, we’ll expose our flank. This is why several divisions are engaged in blocking stances to the south, preventing the Germans to break through and get behind our lines.
4. We didn’t really have a fall-back plan. However, seeing how things are developing, my first inclination is to fall back to the fortified positions that the Germans held before our actions. We can install our new divisions there when they finish training and leave them there to dig in and bring up their organization.
5. We need to develop a “leap frog” tactic that will allow us to minimize the effect of operational delay. Half the divisions attack while the other half wait. We need to wait longer, until the already engaged divisions arrive in the conquered province.

Maybe we'll end up seeing a double encirclement, with the Germans encircling your troops? That's probably too daring for the AI to ever pull off.

The balance is still pretty much the same as it was in the last update: the possibility for great rewards is there, as is the possibility for great doom. It all depends on how many more Germans come your way - your lines look a bit frail for the ambitious pincers you've got planned. Well, perhaps the Germans will flood Denmark with all the troops from Poland, giving you a few extra days.

Up to the december 9th, I have no picture, due to "photobucket" . Is it any way of getting them back ?

Anyway, I wait for the next posts.

In HOI2, the single way I found to save France was to build the Maginot line up to the Manche sea, and delay german troops in Belgium till I have 3 to 4 forts in the provinces between Reims and Dunkerque.

Maybe we'll end up seeing a double encirclement, with the Germans encircling your troops? That's probably too daring for the AI to ever pull off.

The balance is still pretty much the same as it was in the last update: the possibility for great rewards is there, as is the possibility for great doom. It all depends on how many more Germans come your way - your lines look a bit frail for the ambitious pincers you've got planned. Well, perhaps the Germans will flood Denmark with all the troops from Poland, giving you a few extra days.

Up to the december 9th, I have no picture, due to "photobucket" . Is it any way of getting them back ?

Anyway, I wait for the next posts.

In HOI2, the single way I found to save France was to build the Maginot line up to the Manche sea, and delay german troops in Belgium till I have 3 to 4 forts in the provinces between Reims and Dunkerque.

Do you think it will work in HOI3 ?

Carolus - I think the photos are supposed to come back on January 2. Sorry about that, but it's just too much work for me to re-upload all the screenshots to a different photobucket account, and then re-link the posts to photos....

As far as the "Maginot Line Extension" theory, I think in HOI3, France is set up to have very little available IC.... If you notice how little I'm using on upgrades through about mid 1938, there's not much available, and when I was building the forts in the 2 provinces (I really wanted to have one in all provinces bordering Luxembourg, because they tend to fall very quickly), they weren't always getting full funding. IMO, I think it's better to spend the IC on units than to spend it on forts.